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You have to figure out who the right person is to tell the story. And often, people who are very self-aware will only sound as if they are pontificating if they tell the story.

I guess when you write a personal story, people feel compelled to share their own stories.

Each person's life is a story that is telling itself in the living.

I think there's a natural link between the fact that our self is a story that we make up and that we're drawn to stories. It resonates, in a way.

It isn't as if a writer merely records life as it unfurls. Reality does not automatically transcribe as literature; real people are not shapely, compelling characters to be harvested. Charming facts and sharp observations rarely slide seamlessly into whatever narrative is at hand.

It is so common to write autobiographical fiction in which your own experience is thinly disguised.

I think when you're telling a story from inside of you that's genuine, people connect with it.

There are some people who believe that these are not real stories with real people, but they actually are.

Everybody is an expert on one thing - that's what I learned in my high school journalism class - and that's, of course, his own life. And everybody deserves to live and have his story told. And if it doesn't seem like an interesting story, then that's the failure of the listener, or the journalist who retells it badly.